Friday, February 7, 2014

The New Centurions (1972)

This erratic but nervy
film was released at a time when popular portrayals of policemen were mostly
limited to extremes—the sanitized, such as the 1968-1975 TV series Adam-12, and the scandalous, such as the
1971 feature Dirty Harry. Based on
the first novel by real-life former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh, The New Centurions occupies an unsettling
place between these approaches. Characterizing policemen as victims of physical
and psychological violence who are lucky to reach retirement alive—and sane—the
movie is melodramatic and occasionally overwrought. Yet, when viewed as either
an intense character drama or as a historical corrective to one-sided
narratives about law enforcement, The New
Centurions gains a certain degree of validity. It’s also quite well made,
with excellent long-lens photography by Ralph Woolsey capturing the soulless
textures of Los Angeles in a way that accentuates the desensitizing grind of
police patrols.

Furthermore, the movie contains a handful of vivid
performances, from the showy leading turns by Stacy Keach and George C. Scott
to colorful bit parts played by an eclectic roster of actors including William
Atherton, Erik Estrada, Clifton James, Ed Lauter, Roger E. Mosley, Pepe Serna,
James B. Sikking, and Dolph Sweet. And then there are the actors whose
significant supporting turns complement the rhythms of Keach’s and Scott’s work—Jane
Alexander, Rosalind Cash, and Scott Wilson, all three of whom deliver
performances filled with palpable emotion. So even if screenwriter Stirling
Silliphant and director Richard Fleischer let the story run amok at times, The New Centurions contains dozens of
moments that connect.

Although it’s essentially an ensemble piece, the movie focuses
on Roy Fehler (Keach), a rookie cop who hits the streets right after the
opening credits and is partnered with veteran Sergeant Kilvinski (Scott). At
first, Fehler is a soft-spoken married man working his way through law school.
As the movie progresses, he becomes a cynical adrenaline junkie who tanks his
marriage with a combination of alcoholism and recklessness. Meanwhile,
Kilvinski ages out of the force and confronts the depressing truth that he’s
lost without a badge. This psychoanalytic approach to police drama is commonplace
today, but it was innovative in 1972, which is why it’s easy forgive the
filmmakers—and Wambaugh—for the excesses of the story, all of which serve
useful metaphorical purposes. Every death in The New Centurions adds to the overall theme of the price that brave,
crazy, and/or naïve men pay for doing a dangerous job.

After all, who could be
expected to keep their wits when faced with an endless cycle of new crooks and recidivists? “There’s always another asshole on the
street,” Kilvinski says at one point. “You can’t stop ’em all.” And, as Fehler
remarks in another scene, it’s not as if the public’s support for cops is
overwhelming, because the film is set in a time when street justice was
complicated by the rise of the suspect-rights movement: “Last year, everybody
was screaming about the lack of freedom—this year, everybody’s screaming about
the lack of control.” In other words, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

It's been quite a while since I've seen this - for one thing, I'd forgotten that Scott Wilson was in it, so during a more recent (three years ago) viewing of The Ninth Configuration I missed out on a chance to bore the missus with 'Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson were also in The New Centurions together' - but I'm still fairly certain that there's a speech - by Scott? - in this that Mamet must have ripped off for Malone's 'That's how you get Capone' bit in The Untouchables.

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Scott Wilson at a horror convention in Cincinnati. While I loved his performance in The Walking Dead,i talked to him about his performance in this film,which I had just caught on the Sony Movie Channel. I figured enough people would bring up TWD anyway. He was a true gentleman,a very nice man. He said that New Cent.allowed him a chance to show what he can do. Great guy.